Loose, unconnected, free-floating, mobile: this is the modern individual, at least in comparison with the immediate past.

Erich Fromm was a political activist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. Known for his theories of personality and political insight, Fromm dissected the sadomasochistic appeal of brutal dictators while also eloquently championing love--which, he insisted, was nothing if it did not involve joyful contact with others and humanity at large. Admired all over the world, Fromm continues to inspire with his message of universal brotherhood and quest for lasting peace. The first (...) systematic study of Fromm's influences and achievements, this biography revisits the thinker's most important works, especially _Escape from Freedom_ and _The Art of Loving_, which conveyed important and complex ideas to millions of readers. The volume recounts Fromm's political activism as a founder and major funder of Amnesty International, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and other peace groups. Consulting rare archival materials across the globe, Lawrence J. Friedman reveals Fromm's support for anti-Stalinist democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe and his efforts to revitalize American democracy. For the first time, readers learn about Fromm's direct contact with high officials in the American government on matters of war and peace while accessing a deeper understanding of his conceptual differences with Freud, his rapport with Neo-Freudians like Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan, and his association with innovative artists, public intellectuals, and world leaders. Friedman elucidates Fromm's key intellectual contributions, especially his innovative concept of "social character," in which social institutions and practices shape the inner psyche, and he clarifies Fromm's conception of love as an acquired skill. Taking full stock of the thinker's historical and global accomplishments, Friedman portrays a man of immense authenticity and spirituality who made life in the twentieth century more humane than it might have been. (shrink)

Erich Fromm was a political activist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. Known for his theories of personality and political insight, Fromm dissected the sadomasochistic appeal of brutal dictators while also eloquently championing love--which, he insisted, was nothing if it did not involve joyful contact with others and humanity at large. Admired all over the world, Fromm continues to inspire with his message of universal brotherhood and quest for lasting peace. The first (...) systematic study of Fromm's influences and achievements, this biography revisits the thinker's most important works, especially _Escape from Freedom_ and _The Art of Loving_, which conveyed important and complex ideas to millions of readers. The volume recounts Fromm's political activism as a founder and major funder of Amnesty International, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and other peace groups. Consulting rare archival materials across the globe, Lawrence J. Friedman reveals Fromm's support for anti-Stalinist democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe and his efforts to revitalize American democracy. For the first time, readers learn about Fromm's direct contact with high officials in the American government on matters of war and peace while accessing a deeper understanding of his conceptual differences with Freud, his rapport with Neo-Freudians like Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan, and his association with innovative artists, public intellectuals, and world leaders. Friedman elucidates Fromm's key intellectual contributions, especially his innovative concept of "social character," in which social institutions and practices shape the inner psyche, and he clarifies Fromm's conception of love as an acquired skill. Taking full stock of the thinker's historical and global accomplishments, Friedman portrays a man of immense authenticity and spirituality who made life in the twentieth century more humane than it might have been. (shrink)

Although Mr. Schrader states that "it is beyond the scope of [his] paper to examine Kant's argument in the Analytic that our empirical knowledge rests upon a priori knowledge of space and time," he does offer a hint as to how he would go about this: "[Kant] seeks to show that the categories are necessary in order to cognize events in one space and one time, and that all empirical judgments rest upon the assumption that space and time are unitary." (...) This is undeniably the foundation of Kant's theory of time. It shows, however, a bias for the special manner of the objective deduction, where emphasis falls on the unity of consciousness as the basic premiss, instead of on the conditions of representations in general, which is how the basic premiss is stated in the subjective deduction in the first edition. The two are equivalent, as Kant insists, but the formulation in the subjective deduction wears a bolder, more radical countenance, since it stresses what is less explicit in the objective deduction, that all the Analytic is derived from nothing more than the nature of a representation. For most purposes the two transcendental deductions are interchangeable, but for the theory of time we turn most profitably to that deduction which dwells more meticulously on the earliest stages, and elaborates the most primitive steps of the deduction of the categories. Accordingly we will now examine the subjective deduction in the first edition. (shrink)

The essay is an attempt to examine aspects of legal interpretation from an external, sociological point of view. “Interpretation”, in its normal juristic sense, is primarily a process in which decision‐makers with secondary legitimacy link their decisions to authority of primary legitimacy. The type of legitimacy which is dominant within the legal system greatly influences the style of interpretation ‐ in “closed” systems, where the stock of premises is fixed, “legalism” will abound. Legal interpretation is not concerned with what a (...) text really means, in any literal sense; and standards for judging legal interpretation are different from the standards of judging other forms of communication, for example, literature. Indeed, a judge can be considered great precisely because of his creative acts of misinterpretation. (shrink)

BackgroundEthics consult services are well established, but often remain underutilized. Our aim was to identify the barriers and perceptions of the Ethics consult service for physicians, advance practice providers (APPs), and nurses at our urban academic medical center which might contribute to underutilization.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional single-health system, anonymous written online survey, which was developed by the UCSD Health Clinical Ethics Committee and distributed by Survey Monkey. We compare responses between physicians, APPs, and nurses using standard parametric and non-parametric statistical (...) methods. Satisfaction with ethics consult and likelihood of calling Ethics service again were assessed using a 0–100 scale using a 5-likert response structured (0 being “not helpful at all” to 100 being “extremely helpful”) and results presented using box plots and interquartile ranges (IQR).ResultsFrom January to July 2019, approximately 3800 surveys were sent to all physicians, APPs and nurses with a return rate of 5.5—10%. Although the majority of respondents had encountered an ethical dilemma (85–92.1%) only approximately half had ever requested an Ethics consult. The primary reason for physicians never having requested a consult was that they never felt the need for help (41%). For APPs the primary reasons were not knowing an Ethics consult service was available (33.3%) or not knowing how to contact Ethics (27.8%). For nurses, it was not knowing how to contact the Ethics consult service (30.8%) or not feeling the need for help (26.2%). The median satisfaction score (IQR) for Ethics consult services rated on a 0–100 scale, from physicians was 76 (29), for AAPs 89 (49), and nurses 70 (40) (p = 0.62). The median (IQR) of likelihood of consulting Ethics in the future also on a 0–100 scale was 71 (47) for physicians, 69 (45) for APPs, and 61 (45) for nurses (p = 0.79). APP’s and nurses were significantly more likely than physicians to believe that the team did not act on the Ethics consult’s recommendations.ConclusionsBased on the results presented, we were able to identify actionable steps to better engage healthcare providers—and in particular APPs and nurses—and scale up institutional educational efforts to increase awareness of the role of the Ethics consult service at our institution. Actionable steps included implementing a system of ongoing feedback that is critical for the sustainability of the Ethics service role. We hope this project can serve as a blueprint for other hospital-based Ethics consult services to improve the quality of their programs. (shrink)

This paper addresses the knowledge required for individuals to evaluate Information and Communications Technologies decisions that relate to the organization and management of cyberspace, and to hold accountable the parties responsible for those decisions, whether the responsible party is a government actor, market actor or private individual. The authors argue that the Open Systems Interconnection model, with certain modifications, should serve as a primary educational tool in helping individuals to gain the understanding of ICT necessary to protect public interests related (...) to cyberspace. (shrink)

Few novel or emerging infectious diseases have posed such vital ethical challenges so quickly and dramatically as the novel coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2. The World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern and recently classified Covid‐19 as a worldwide pandemic. As of this writing, the epidemic has not yet peaked in the United States, but community transmission is widespread. President Trump declared a national emergency as fifty governors declared state emergencies. In the coming weeks, hospitals will become overrun, stretched (...) to their capacities. When the health system becomes stretched beyond capacity, how can we ethically allocate scarce health goods and services? How can we ensure that marginalized populations can access the care they need? What ethical duties do we owe to vulnerable people separated from their families and communities? And how do we ethically and legally balance public health with civil liberties? (shrink)

Health inequalities are embedded in a complex array of social, political, and economic inequalities. Responding to health inequalities will require systematic action targeting all the underlying (“upstream”) social determinants that powerfully affect health and well‐being. Systemic inequalities are a major reason for the rise of modern populism that has deeply divided polities and infected politics, perhaps nowhere more so than in the United States. Concerted action to mitigate shocking levels of inequality could be a powerful antidote to nationalist populism. A (...) basic yet critical start to addressing health inequalities is to recognize them, which demands improving data collection and analysis. Certainly, global indicators show vast progress in reducing poverty and extending life. Yet aggregate health data mask a deeper reality: health gains have disproportionately benefited the well‐off, leaving the poor and middle‐class behind. (shrink)

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is facing two crises: a potentially explosive Ebola epidemic and a major insurgency. But they are not wholly distinct from each other: the first is intertwined with the second, and public mistrust and political violence add a dangerous dimension to the Ebola epidemic. The World Health Organization and other health emergency responders will increasingly find themselves fighting outbreaks in insecure, misgoverned or ungoverned zones, possibly experiencing active conflict. Yet the WHO has neither the mission (...) nor the capabilities to navigate these security threats. We cannot expect that the usual public health strategy will succeed when health workers’ lives are directly imperiled and community resistance runs deep. Tackling health emergencies amidst complex humanitarian crises requires fresh thinking. Here, we offer a blueprint for fighting diseases in complex humanitarian emergencies. The building blocks of security and trust include high‐level political support, street‐level diplomacy, community engagement, enhanced funding, and protection of health professionals working in conflict or disaster zones. (shrink)

The singular message in Global Health Law is that we must strive to achieve global health with justice—improved population health, with a fairer distribution of benefits of good health. Global health entails ensuring the conditions of good health—public health, universal health coverage, and the social determinants of health—while justice requires closing today’s vast domestic and global health inequities. These conditions for good health should be incorporated into public policy, supplemented by specific actions to overcome barriers to equity. A new global (...) health treaty grounded in the right to health and aimed at health equity—a Framework Convention on Global Health —stands out for its possibilities in helping to achieve global health with justice. This far-reaching legal instrument would establish minimum standards for universal health coverage and public health measures, with an accompanying national and international financing framework, require a constant focus on health equity, promote Health in All Policies and global governance for health, and advance the principles of good governance, including accountability. While achieving an FCGH is certainly ambitious, it is a struggle worth the efforts of us all. The treaty’s basis in the right to health, which has been agreed to by all governments, has powerful potential to form the foundation of global governance for health. From interpretations of UN treaty bodies to judgments of national courts, the right to health is now sufficiently articulated to serve this role, with the individual’s right to health best understood as a function of a social, political, and economic environment aimed at equity. However great the political challenge of securing state agreement to the FCGH, it is possible. States have joined other treaties with significant resource requirements and limitations on their sovereignty without significant reciprocal benefits from other states, while important state interests would benefit from the FCGH. And from integrating the FCGH into the existing human rights system to creative forms of compliance and enforcement and strengthened domestic legal and political accountability mechanisms, the treaty stands to improve right to health compliance. The potential for the FCGH to bring the right to health nearer universal reality calls for us to embark on the journey towards securing this global treaty. (shrink)

Roughly speaking all economists can be divided into two groups--those who agree with Milton Friedman and those who do not. Both groups, however, espouse the view that science is a series of approximations to a demonstrated accord with reality. Methodological controversy in economics is now merely a Conventionalist argument over which comes first--simplicity or generality. Furthermore, this controversy in its current form is not compatible with one important new and up and coming economic (welfare) theory called "the theory of the (...) Second Best." In this paper I offer a Second Best meta-theory that says that (1) any compromise between simplicity and generality must yield a theory which is "third best" by these Conventionalist criteria; and (2) there exists a better way than a compromise. (shrink)

This essay seeks to start a dialogue between two traditions that historically have interpreted the economy in opposing ways: the individualism of classic economic liberalism (CEL), represented by Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, and the communitarianism of Catholic social teaching (CST), interpreted primarily through the teachings of popes and secondarily the U.S. Catholic bishops. The present authors, an economist and a moral theologian who identify with one or the other of the two traditions, strive to clarify objectively their similarities and (...) differences with the opposing perspective. Section one focuses on each position''s perspective of love of self and love of others. We find both CEL and CST saying that self-love, rightly understood, constitutes a moral good and that the love of others serves as an important principle in the political economy. We find less agreement in section two regarding justice and rights, but even here, we discover a few surprises. Both traditions uphold justice (giving to each party what is due) as essential to the political economy, and recognize some similarity in that type of justice called commutative. We note, however, substantial differences regarding a second type of justice that we call "public justice." First, they differ over the extent to which government should be involved. Here the meaning of rights, especially that of individual freedom, arises. Secondly, the traditions diverge over whether benevolence as a motivator ought to serve as a partner for public justice. Thirdly, CEL in general opposes CST''s emphasis on social justice that calls upon institutions to be proactive in helping citizens and groups to become active participants in the economy. We conclude our essay by summarizing our discoveries and by suggesting areas for further dialogue. (shrink)

Women have historically been prevented from living autonomously by systematic injustice, subordination, and oppression. The lingering effects of these practices have prompted many feminists to view autonomy with suspicion. Here, Marilyn Friedman defends the ideal of feminist autonomy. In her eyes, behavior is autonomous if it accords with the wants, cares, values, or commitments that the actor has reaffirmed and is able to sustain in the face of opposition. By her account, autonomy is socially grounded yet also individualizing and sometimes (...) socially disruptive, qualities that can be ultimately advantageous for women. Friedman applies the concept of autonomy to domains of special interest to women. She defends the importance of autonomy in romantic love, considers how social institutions should respond to women who choose to remain in abusive relationships, and argues that liberal societies should tolerate minority cultural practices that violate women's rights so long as the women in question have chosen autonomously to live according to those practices. (shrink)

The operation of developing a concept is a common procedure in mathematics and in natural science, but has traditionally seemed much less possible to philosophers and, especially, logicians. Meir Buzaglo's innovative study proposes a way of expanding logic to include the stretching of concepts, while modifying the principles which block this possibility. He offers stimulating discussions of the idea of conceptual expansion as a normative process, and of the relation of conceptual expansion to truth, meaning, reference, ontology and paradox, (...) and analyzes the views of Kant, Wittgenstein, Godel, and others, paying especially close attention to Frege. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from philosophers to logicians, mathematicians, linguists, and cognitive scientists. (shrink)

In this new book, Michael Friedman argues that Kant's continuing efforts to find a metaphysics that could provide a foundation for the sciences is of the utmost ...

This Book Incorporates Prof. Friedman S Lectures And Discussions That Were A Part Of The Inter-Cultural Dialogue At Many Levels. His Major Contribution Is In Developing An Approach That Is Within The Framework Of The Human Image.

A systematic theory of naturalism, bridging metaphysics and the science of complexity and emergence.

This paper describes a version of type identity physicalism, which we call Flat Physicalism, and shows how it meets several objections often raised against identity theories. This identity theory is informed by recent results in the conceptual foundations of physics, and in particular clar- ifies the notion of ‘physical kinds’ in light of a conceptual analysis of the paradigmatic case of reducing thermody- namics to statistical mechanics. We show how Flat Physi- calism is compatible with the appearance of multiple realisation (...) in the special sciences, and how and in what sense the special sciences laws are autonomous from the laws of physics, despite the full reductive picture of Flat Physicalism. We compare our view with a recent proposal by William Bechtel that accounts for the appearance of levels in mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

_A systematic theory of naturalism, bridging metaphysics and the science of complexity and emergence._.

The philosophy of Solomon Maimon is usually considered an important link between Kant’s transcendental philosophy and German idealism. Highly praised during his lifetime, over the past two centuries Maimon’s genius has been poorly understood and often ignored. Meir Buzaglo offers a reconstruction of Maimon’s philosophy, revealing that its true nature becomes apparent only when viewed in light of his philosophy of mathematics. This provides the key to understanding Maimon’s solution to Kant’s _quid juris_ question concerning the connection between intuition (...) and concept in mathematics. Maimon’s original approach avoids dispensing with intuition while reducing the reliance on intuition in its Kantian sense. As Buzaglo demonstrates, this led Maimon to question Kant’s ultimate rejection of the possibility of metaphysics and, simultaneously, to suggest a unique type of skepticism. (shrink)

This paper makes a novel linkage between the multiple-computations theorem in philosophy of mind and Landauer’s principle in physics. The multiple-computations theorem implies that certain physical systems implement simultaneously more than one computation. Landauer’s principle implies that the physical implementation of “logically irreversible” functions is accompanied by minimal entropy increase. We show that the multiple-computations theorem is incompatible with, or at least challenges, the universal validity of Landauer’s principle. To this end we provide accounts of both ideas in terms of (...) low-level fundamental concepts in statistical mechanics, thus providing a deeper understanding of these ideas than their standard formulations given in the high-level terms of thermodynamics and cognitive science. Since Landauer’s principle is pivotal in the attempts to derive the universal validity of the second law of thermodynamics in statistical mechanics, our result entails that the multiple-computations theorem has crucial implications with respect to the second law. Finally, our analysis contributes to the understanding of notions, such as “logical irreversibility,” “entropy increase,” “implementing a computation,” in terms of fundamental physics, and to resolving open questions in the literature of both fields, such as: what could it possibly mean that a certain physical process implements a certain computation. (shrink)

Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue , the first study in any language to provide a complete overview of Buber's thought, remains the definitive guide to the full range of his work and the starting point for all modern Buber scholarship. As well as summarizing Buber's early intellectual development and attitudes - his mysticism, his youthful existentialism, his philosophy of Judaism and religious socialism - it focuses on the two crucial issues of his mature thought: his dialogic or I-Thou philosophy, (...) and his probing of the nature and redemption of evil. As a sensitive, intuitive and perennially fascinating account of one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers, and as an influential classic in its own right, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue reveals the implications of Buber's thought for theory of knowledge, education, philosophy, myth, history and Judaic and Christian belief. This fully revised and expanded 4th edition includes a new preface from the author, an expanded bibliography incorporating new Buber scholarship, and two new appendices in the form of essays on Buber's influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend Rudolf Carnap's Principle of Tolerance from an accusation, due to Michael Friedman, that it is self-defeating by prejudicing any debate towards the logically stronger theory. In particular, Friedman attempts to show that Carnap's reconstruction of the debate between classicists and intuitionists over the foundations of mathematics in his book The Logical Syntax of Language, is biased towards the classical standpoint since the metalanguage he constructs to adjudicate between the rival positions is fully classical. I argue (...) that this criticism is mistaken on two counts: (1) it fails to fully appreciate the freedom with regard to the construction of linguistic frameworks that Carnap intended his Principle to embody, and (2) Friedman's objection underestimates the extent to which the evaluation of a framework is task-relative. I conclude that Tolerance is not self-undermining in the way that Friedman claims it is. While this is a restricted conclusion -- and is not a vindication of Carnap's views on logic and mathematics tout court -- it nonetheless suggests that his tolerant perspective has been dismissed too quickly, even by his supporters. (shrink)

It is widely claimed that the second Critique’s argument for the postulate of immortality is relevantly different from the first Critique’s argument for the postulate. It is also widely claimed that after the second Critique, Kant distances himself from its particular version of the argument, and even the postulate altogether. It is the purpose of this article to challenge these claims, arguing instead that (a) there is overwhelming textual evidence showing that Kant did not abandon the postulate; (b) the second (...) Critique does not contain a substantially different argument for the postulate than how it is argued for in the first Critique; and (c) the philosophical objections levied against the second Critique’s argument, including its putative substitution of holiness for virtue, become moot once its argument is better understood. (shrink)

Can the second law of thermodynamics explain our mental experience of the direction of time? According to an influential approach, the past hypothesis of universal low entropy also explains how the psychological arrow comes about. We argue that although this approach has many attractive features, it cannot explain the psychological arrow after all. In particular, we show that the past hypothesis is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the psychological arrow on the basis of current physics. We propose two necessary (...) conditions on the workings of the brain that any account of the psychological arrow of time must satisfy. And we propose a new reductive physical account of the psychological arrow of time compatible with time-symmetric physics, according to which these two conditions are also sufficient. Our proposal has some radical implications, for example, that the psychological arrow of time is fundamental, whereas the temporal direction of entropy increase in the second law of thermodynamics and the past hypothesis is derived from it, rather than the other way around. 1Introduction2A Physical Account of the Psychological Arrow of Time3Necessary Conditions for the Psychological Arrow of Time4The Psychological Arrow of Time via the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Past Hypothesis5Why the Past Hypothesis Is Insufficient for the Psychological Arrow of Time5.1Stage 1, Version 1: From the past hypothesis to the psychological arrow via typicality5.2Stage 1, Version 2: From the past hypothesis to the psychological arrow via dynamical or causal considerations5.3Stage 2: From entropy gradient in the brain to the psychological arrow of time6Why the Past Hypothesis Is Unnecessary for the Psychological Arrow of Time7A New Reductive Account of the Psychological Arrow of Time. (shrink)

It has been accepted since the early part of the Century that there is no problem formalizing mathematics in standard formal systems of axiomatic set theory. Most people feel that they know as much as they ever want to know about how one can reduce natural numbers, integers, rationals, reals, and complex numbers to sets, and prove all of their basic properties. Furthermore, that this can continue through more and more complicated material, and that there is never a real problem.

This book situates Levinas in the pantheon of modern Jewish thinkers, discussing a number of themes that frequently occur in Jewish thought. The author presents Levinas's oeuvre, which comprises two parts - his Jewish, "confessional" writings and his philosophical, "professional" writings - as a unity. The question of the exact relationship between these two types of writings is a lively discussion in present day scholarship. How does Levinas perceive the relationship between revelation and philosophy, the biblical address and the logos, (...) the Saying and the said, faith and reason? There is a long oppositional tradition which contrasts Athens with Jerusalem, yet Levinas does not take part in such an antithetical tradition. Without reconciling or harmonizing, he belongs to the philosophical tradition as well as to the Jewish tradition. This double allegiance explains the presence of philosophical terms and themes in his Jewish thought and the presence of Jewish words and ideas in his metaphysics. Levinas is presented by the author as a frequent traveler between Athens and Jerusalem and as a great translator from "Hebrew" to "Greek". However, the relationship between "Hebrew" and "Greek" in Levinas's writings is not one of prototext and phenotext or of subtext and text, but rather one of a primordial inspirational word and the conceptual discourse. In an inclusive reading, Meir shows that the acquaintance with Levinas's Jewish writings is helpful in understanding his subtle philosophical analyses and a necessary condition for the understanding of the whole Levinas.--Cover. (shrink)

Logic and Computation is concerned with techniques for formal theorem-proving, with particular reference to Cambridge LCF (Logic for Computable Functions). Cambridge LCF is a computer program for reasoning about computation. It combines methods of mathematical logic with domain theory, the basis of the denotational approach to specifying the meaning of statements in a programming language. This book consists of two parts. Part I outlines the mathematical preliminaries: elementary logic and domain theory. They are explained at an intuitive level, giving references (...) to more advanced reading. Part II provides enough detail to serve as a reference manual for Cambridge LCF. It will also be a useful guide for implementors of other programs based on the LCF approach. (shrink)

Kant's original version of transcendental philosophy took both Euclidean geometry and the Newtonian laws of motion to be synthetic a priori constitutive principles—which, from Kant's point of view, function as necessary presuppositions for applying our fundamental concepts of space, time, matter, and motion to our sensible experience of the natural world. Although Kant had very good reasons to view the principles in question as having such a constitutively a priori role, we now know, in the wake of Einstein's work, that (...) they are not in fact a priori in the stronger sense of being fixed necessary conditions for all human experience in general, eternally valid once and for all. And it is for precisely this reason that Kant's original version of transcendental philosophy must now be either rejected entirely or radically reconceived. Most philosophy of science since Einstein has taken the former route: the dominant view in logical empiricism, for example, was that the Kantian synthetic a priori had to be rejected once and for all in the light of the general theory of relativity. (shrink)